Some desks are specifically designed for computers and include a shallow sliding tray or drawer for storing the keyboard below the desktop. The tray is designed to slide outwardly to a position in front of the desk so that the user can access the keyboard when operating the computer. Some trays contain a pivoting front wall that can be raised into an upright position or lowered into a horizontal position. When the tray is positioned under the desktop for storing the keyboard, the front wall is typically pivoted into the upright position to hide the keyboard. When the tray is slid outwardly into a position in front of the desk for accessing the keyboard, the front wall is typically pivoted downwardly into the horizontal position in front of the keyboard to act as a handrest.
FIGS. 1 and 2 depict the typical prior art method of pivotably securing a front wall to a keyboard tray. Keyboard tray 100 includes a bottom wall 102 and three side walls 108. The front wall 106 is mounted to the bottom wall 102 of tray 100 with a pair of standard hinges 104. The hinges 104 are usually spaced apart from each other. One hinge member 104a of each hinge 104 is mounted to the upper surface of bottom wall 102 and the other hinge member 104b is mounted to the inner surface of front wall 106. FIG. 1 depicts front wall 106 in an upright position and FIG. 2 depicts front wall 106 in a horizontal position. A drawback of this design is that a large gap 110 extends between the front wall 106 and the bottom wall 102 due to the location of the pivot 104c of the hinges 104. This gap 110 is usually large enough such that objects the size of a pencil can fall through the gap 110 which can be a nuisance to the user. In addition, as can be seen in FIG. 2, exposed edges of pivot 104c as well as hinge members 104a/104b on the bottom wall 102 and the front wall 106 are in areas that could cause injury to the user of the computer by scraping or scratching the user's hands or wrists.